Common Sense

On Saturday, Breitbart posted the following headline:

Netanyahu Opposes Biden: No Way Palestinian Authority Runs Gaza Again

No kidding.

In August 2005, Israel evacuated (some forcibly) it’s citizens from the Gaza Strip and turned the territory over to the Palestinian Authority. Since that time many thousands of rockets and mortar shells have been fired from the Gaza Strip onto southern Israeli towns and villages, terrorizing and destabilizing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens. It became very obvious very quickly that the Gaza Strip was not going to be a peaceful partner to a two-state solution. I can’t imagine any country in the world putting up with a neighbor who is constantly raining rockets down on its population. If Mexico were lobbing rockets into Texas on a regular basis, would America tolerate that? Then why do we expect Israel to tolerate it? Israel has been more than patient with its terrorist neighbor, and that patience probably would have continued were it not for the events of October 7.

The article at Breitbart notes:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his opposition Saturday night to a proposal by U.S. President Joe Biden to restore control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (PA) once Hamas is removed from power and destroyed.

On Saturday, Biden published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he supported Israel, though once again joining the Israeli cause to the Ukrainian one, putting Hamas and Russia in the same category as enemies of the United States.

Biden also reiterated his support for a “two-state solution” as the only answer to the conflict, and added: “As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.”

However, Netanyahu emphatically rejected that idea.

The article concludes:

Despite the loss of U.S. aid under the Taylor Force Act, which President Donald Trump signed in 2018 to prohibit taxpayer dollars from funding the PA as long as it continues “pay-to-slay,” the PA has not changed its policy.

The PA also continues naming public parks and monuments after terrorists, and Palestinian educational materials are frequently filled with anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda.

The PA ran Gaza from 1994 to 2007, when it was ousted by Hamas in a violent coup. Rocket attacks against Israeli civilians began years before it was ousted, and especially from 2001 onwards, despite a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and civilians in 2005.

The Palestinian Authority may look better on the surface than Hamas, but they are cut of the same cloth. As long as the schools in the Gaza Strip continue to educate children to grow up and kill Jews, the Gaza Strip cannot be trusted as a peaceful part of a two-state solution.